The Consequences of Bad Actions
by Gremblin
Summary: Companion to "She Remembers". What Once-ler did after Norma left.


_A follow-up for "She Remembers", so you should probably go read that one first. Some things won't make sense in this if you haven't._

**One**

As soon as the object leaves his hand Once-ler knows he's gone too far.

Norma, who has been at his side since before even his family was, since before the Thneeds gained such wild popularity, who had been just trying to cheer him up, runs. Once-ler watches with horrified eyes as she doesn't look back even once all the way down the hallway from his office.

It isn't until he sees her run past their shared bedroom that he realizes what she's going to do and jumps into motion. He runs after her with the intention to try and stop her, talk her out of leaving, apologize. She's faster than him, though, in better shape. While he's been sitting all day behind one desk or another she's been active. He knows she used to go out and spend all day outside. More than once he'd wanted to join her but biggering his company was hard work and there was always something that needed his attention.

He trips on one of the things that spilled out of the broken gift Norma had been trying to give to him, then on the rug in the hallway. By the time he reaches the front door she's already in her car driving away.

Too late. Everything is always too late with him. Too late he noticed the damage done to the forest. Too late he noticed his family had just been using him, using his success. Too late he noticed he'd driven away the people, the friends, that had truly supported and loved him.

Once-ler sits on the second-to-last step and watches Norma's car disappear towards Thneedville, the town that they'd built for the factory workers to live in.

"She'll come back" he tells himself hopefully.

Maybe, he hopes, if he tells himself that enough he'll start to believe it.

**Two**

Even two months after the factory shuts down people still travel to Once-ler's home to try and talk him into investing in their company. He may not have anything to sell but he still has more money than most people could ever spend in their entire life times, as well as some still coming in from various other sources. There are still stores with some Thneeds in them, not to mention the workers of Thneedville are mostly still living there, finding other ways to survive. They still have to pay to live in or do nearly anything with the buildings or the land because Once-ler owns them.

None of the hopeful company-owners talk Once-ler into parting with his money, though.

Once-ler hasn't been seen outside his home since the factory had shut down. He still tells himself that one day Norma will come back to him.

Not even the grocery delivery man sees Once-ler. Money is passed out through the letter box and the groceries are put down on the front stoop, where they fall down a trap door, through a chute, and into a pile on the kitchen floor.

Eventually they get put away.

**Three** It takes nearly a year for Once-ler to finally go back into his office. He's been avoiding it since Norma left. He didn't even go back in to clean the mess he'd made of her gift.

The rug in the hall is still pulled up from where he'd tripped on it while chasing after her. It makes him want to turn back from the memory of his failure to stop her. He continues on, gathering his meagre strength.

Carefully he opens the door. He remembers tripping there too, there had been marbles or something similar inside the gift he'd thrown and broken. He hadn't even looked at them, just known they were stopping him from getting to where he desperately needed to be before Norma got there.

Once-ler finally peers down at the mess on the floor and nearly falls to pieces all over again.

Seeds. A hundred seeds, it looks like, strewn around the floor. Many of them were squashed, broken, unable to grow because he'd stepped on them, fallen on them. Out of all of the seeds that had been collected – and it must have taken Norma years to collect them all, Once-ler can't help but think – there's maybe twenty, maybe a little more than that, left that will be able to grow when they're planted.

He collects all the perfect, round, unharmed seeds and puts them onto his desk as if they're the most precious things he's ever seen. They are, in his mind. They're the start of a new forest once the smog clears up a little. The factory's been shut down so it should only take a couple years. He's willing to wait because he has something to look forward to now. When the forest starts to grow back the Lorax will return.

With the Lorax back maybe – just maybe – the animals will come back too.

Once the good seeds are all safely out of the way Once-ler picks up the remains of those that he broke. He takes them outside and buries them because it's only proper. He killed their parent trees so it's only right the seeds get the funeral that the full-grown Truffula trees never received.

He can't do much for his lost friends but what he can do he's _determined_ to do.

Done burying the broken seeds, Once-ler returns inside to his office to clean up the glass and paper. The choice of wrapping colour makes him smile sadly, shaking his head fondly. Only Norma would choose those colours to put together. Green and pink, really, what was she thinking?

The glass he takes his time with. He has to find a bag to put it in that won't rip from the sharp shards and that takes longer than he thinks. He has to go all the way down to the kitchen to find one, in the cupboard right next to the toothpaste because the bathroom had been in the middle of being renovated when he'd kicked all his staff out of the factory, out of his home.

It takes him half an hour to sweep all the glass up into one pile. That long because he's determined to not miss a single piece.

When Norma comes back he doesn't want her to cut her feet on a piece he missed. She enjoys walking around in bare feet sometimes, after all.

It's when he dumps the glass into the garbage bag that Once-ler notices the strange piece of white plastic mixed in amongst the dirty smudges of the broken glass.

He doesn't know what it is, at first. He's never seen one before, but he's heard them talked about. When Once-ler finally realizes what he's looking at and what it's telling him his heart freezes. His stomach loses it's bottom and his throat tightens.

"What have I done?" he asks the empty room, horrified as he realizes just what exactly he chased away, what he _lost_, that day so long ago.

**Four** Thneedville is just like Once-ler remembers it while at the same time completely different.

The last time he'd been there people loved him, applauded his passing, asked to shake his hand.

This time many people glared at him. Most of the people in Thneedville had relied on Once-ler for money, for their job, and when the factory shut down they'd been suddenly without either. They'd needed to find something else to do to support themselves and their families.

One person even threw a tomato at him, bringing back the painful memory of the first time it had happened. Norma wasn't here this time to yell at the man and make everything better though.

He doesn't know where Norma lives, but he does know where her parents live. They'd never been too fond of him but they had always been polite at least, had never spoken down to him like his mother and aunt were prone to doing. He goes to the home that He and Norma had given them as an anniversary gift.

They're as pleased to see him as the man that had thrown the tomato at Once-ler was.

Once-ler is met with the business end of a shotgun pressed into his chest, making him stop moving instantly. He doesn't even breathe for a few moments, not wanting to risk doing even that to anger Norma's father.

"Get out of here." The man growls angrily. "Get out and don't come back."

Once-ler speaks in his calmest tone. He pulls it out from particularly difficult business deals where he was getting annoyed with the people he had to deal with, but couldn't let them know they were getting to him. "I just want to speak with Norma. Apologize."

"Apology not accepted. Get lost you useless piece of trash." Norma's father pokes the shotgun into Once-ler's chest harder.

Once-ler looks into the man's eyes, pleading silently. He wants to know if his suspicion's are true. Wants to know if Norma's okay. Wants to beg Norma to come back home with him.

The look in the eyes of Norma's father doesn't change, just gets harder, so Once-ler turns slowly and walks away. He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jacket and goes back home.

Goes back to his _empty_ home.

**Five**

Year pass. People come to try and talk him into giving up some of his money less and less. Once-ler doesn't tell them that he's burning his way through it during the winter to keep himself warm, because at least when they're talking he knows they're really there. He's started seeing things, sometimes, and it scares him. But his delusions give him someone to talk to during the long months – years, sometimes – between visitors.

His favourite imaginary friend is a little girl with Norma's eyes and ears and his nose and mouth. The little girl is six years old and loves to listen to him play guitar even though he's nowhere near as good at playing the instrument as he used to be.

He names her Junior, because there's too many people he wants to name her after.

**Six**

Every few years someone comes to ask if he knows where to find more trees. He doesn't know why people think he knows the answer to that because if he did his factory wouldn't have closed down, would it?

He sends them all away with the boot that he built specially for kicking intruders off his property.

**Seven**

It's on the one hundred and forty sixth day of the fifteenth year since Norma left when Once-ler realizes what he should do with the seeds sitting in a bowl on the table next to his bed. The smog's not lifting, it's actually getting worse if anything and he doesn't want to plant the seeds if they're not going to grow. He only realizes because a little boy with sad eyes and a bad cough knocks on his door and asks Once-ler not where the trees are, but if Once-ler knows where he can find smogless air for free. Because Mr. O'Hare's air was too expensive but his mother was really sick and needed cleaner air to get better.

The first seed goes home with the sad-eyed boy without a story to explain it's significance or even what it is.

The second person to ask the right question gets the honour of having to come back more than once to earn a seed through listening to Once-ler's story. Carefully edited for children's ears, of course.

He doesn't know, after all, if one of the children that come (because it's mostly only them now, adults have lost interest in him) are actually his. He always hopes that one of them are, but doesn't think Norma would ever let their son or daughter out of town.

**Eight**

Not everyone that comes gets a Truffula seed. Once-ler doesn't have enough for that so he finds ways to make sure that the people that get them will take care of them. It gets easier as more time passes because fewer and fewer people leave town. Less people remember him, remember where the factory was.

Every few years Once-ler makes the trip to town to try and find Norma. He never does despite going out of his way each time to make himself look presentable. He never bothers to comb his hair or trim the mustache that's slowly growing over his face at home. He makes his way to town only to find he's blocked by a wall. A giant unclimbable wall.

Undeterred, Once-ler tries following the wall. Surely there's a way inside. The people in the town would need a way to leave, after all. Surely they haven't completely forgotten that he lives out in the valley, he still owns the town after all. They'd know where their rent went, wouldn't they?

It takes him all day and part of the night to walk all the way around the wall now surrounding Thneedville. He doesn't find a single door. Not one that's able to be reached, anyways.

So he goes back home. What's left of it, anyway, the people of Thneedville had long since taken the factory apart for the scrap metal it had become.

**Nine**

Something that Junior helps Once-ler with is thinking.

What he thinks about most is what he could have done differently. What he could have done that wouldn't have killed the forest. What he could have done to keep Norma from leaving. What he could have done to help the animals more.

The answer that Junior gives him seems easier than it would have actually been. Typical, really, for the six year old she's supposed to be. "You could," she says for each one "have been happy with what you had."

Once-ler wonders when his delusions became smarter than he is.

**Ten**

On the sixty-seventh day of the forty-eighth year since Norma left, the fifth year since anyone had been to his house, the twentieth year since he'd last tried to go into Thneedville to try and find Norma, someone rings his doorbell.

Once-ler had at first been asleep in bed but the sound of the railing being knocked off his front porch woke him back up. He didn't even need to think about activating the trap he'd built into the door after the third businessman had come to his door so long ago. He'd tried ignoring them at first, but they'd refused to go away, just hammering away on the doorbell. They couldn't ring the doorbell if they were three or four stories up in the air after all.

The childish screams of terror couldn't help but make Once-ler grin in amusement. Junior, still six, scowled at him disapprovingly. He just stuck his tongue out at her and waved her away as he slowly got up out of bed, his bones creaking and popping as he went.

Reaching his bedroom window, boarded up with wood from his kitchen table after a bad storm that had broken the glass out of the frame, Once-ler was met with a kid. A _real_ kid. At least he was pretty sure the boy was real but he couldn't be _completely_ sure ...

Once-ler reached out to touch the boy, grab hold of him, make sure he was really there but failed. The boy's struggling moved him out of Once-ler's reach.

The kid wanted a tree and someone in town had said that Once-ler was the person to go to in order to get one. Well, if the kid wanted one he was going to have to prove he'd take care of it.

Looking over at the bowl sitting on the small table beside his bed, Once-ler hoped that maybe this time he had the right kid. Because if he didn't ... his chances to right the incredible wrong he'd done were up.

Once-ler turned back and started his story. Still censored for a child's ears, of course.

::::::::::

_ ~ End_ ~


End file.
